Easily distracted by shiny objects.

April 28, 2017

I had stopped watching the program very often, but Amy Goodman referenced Imani Gandy, whom I follow on Twitter. Gandhi has been a supporter of Hillary Clinton and, like me, is not enamored of Bernie Sanders.

maybe i should go on a zombie run. honestly, the only reason i'm getting in shape is that i'm preparing for the apocalypse.

Goodman, by using a quote from Gandy about Sanders, can sidestep the question as to what her own views are. She really is very clever. I guess I'll start sending Democracy Now some money again. It's important to keep informed about the Sanders progressives.

The push is to rally the forces around Sanders and create a third party. The part of their strategy that I think is most questionable is the assertion that Sanders is the most popular politician in the country. The right attacked Clinton, not him, because they wanted him to win the nomination. Then they would have gone after him and his wife. I believe he would have been very easy to defeat.

I really want to see younger people in charge, especially young women. I worry about the misreading of Sanders as a man of the people. He represents a small, mostly white state as a U.S. Senator. He has quite a loud voice, which he uses to assert the evils of capitalism and Wall Street, etc. etc. over and over. I would welcome a more nuanced approach that acknowledges the disproportionate representation of women and children in the ranks of the poor. And I don't forget that Clinton got almost 3,000,000 votes over Trump in spite of her "baggage" and all the mud slung at her.

On the local front: I will be getting my port tomorrow and will resume chemo next week. Ugh and ugh. But I know it's the way to go. The chemo has been very effective so far. And, above all, I've got that terrific team of doctors and nurses working in my behalf and so much family support.

And now we have our kitten. We tried getting along without one and are still mourning the loss of Fred, but one of our neighbors found the little black charmer, and when we saw him we were hooked.

I've been going through papers and letters, etc. and found a letter to my mother from my Aunt Ynez, written in 1954. With her name and her husband's name spelled right, I was able, finally, to find the obit of her son, my cousin, who died last year of cancer at age 84. He was described as proud of his "California Spanish," heritage but according to his photo had that same kind of Irish face I do.

We are hanging in there!

Update: Ugh. The port placement was an awful experience. I had to keep reminding myself that this was not some sort of surreal nightmare, but it really was about at the limit of bearability. What I am concerned about now is not surrendering to the passive mentality that is so tempting and that I am seeing in other cancer patients. I remember one of my aunts who had a lot of surgery and eventually succumbed to cancer, who said that she just numbed herself to get through these ordeals. Luckily enough, I feel fine today, even strong. But it's back to chemo next week. I know it's worth it, though, because I was at death's door before I started treatment.

April 27, 2017

April 22, 2017

Donald Trump is who we are. Look at me, for instance. I love juicy gossip about trivial people. So much stuff about the Donald was keeping the public amused.

Until, to our horror, he became President, and he was no longer funny. Or so I thought.

Then, as if by some miracle, I found this piece. It is so clever that it wasn't until the part about how Ivanka purportedly was so concerned about women that she wanted to distribute coathangers to women who couldn't get abortions that I realized this was satire. I would have thought that it would be impossible to write satire about Trump, but the author, Benjamin Hart, has done it. I'm following Hart on Twitter now. I have a jones for Twitter and have to force myself not to be checking it for updates all the time.

April 19, 2017

Or trying to. I feel better than I have in ages. My platelet count was too low for me to have a port put in, so that will happen next week, and my chemotherapy will resume.

The flood of current news, information, opinion these days is simply overwhelming, even for a person in good health! It seems that every day generates some new outrage. So I'm trying to look at some of the more pernicious outrageousness coming from the left that can be missed in such a heated atmosphere. Twitter is now where I get all my news. It's up to date or even up to the minute, and the links take me to important journalism. Twitter is the hottest medium ever. Tweets are short and action oriented, but I can always dig deeper to get more detailed and thoughtful analyses.

Bernie is a Berniecrat. Send him money. In the old days, men like Sanders did not need a lot of money to have just about everything they wanted. But now it's costing them more. As a woman who could be regarded as mainstream I am not enamored of Sanders or his "follow me" message.

I skimmed through the jargon in this piece, wondering what the author thought he was saying, and then read this:

I’ve been a metamodernist creative writer for many years now, but had not seen an opportunity to bring this earnest, optimistic, and loving art practice into my professional writing activities until Bernie Sanders came along. Not only do I fully support and endorse Senator Sanders’ agenda, I see in his political methodology evidence of the metamodern, just as I know for certain when I hear Clinton’s cynical incrementalism that I am in the presence of a postmodern political ethos. The reason we think of Bernie Sanders as impractical or even naive is that he is; what most fail to see, however, is that his is the “informed naivete” of metamodernism. He sees that our economic and cultural markets are in a terminal state of deconstruction, and yes, this makes him angry and “negative” in a certain respect, but he sees too that the opportunity this deconstruction affords us all is a moment in which we can reconstruct everything we’ve known in a way that better reflects our values.

I don't know what to say to rebut this outrageous nonsense.

And this. Wow. I will think of this article by Ijeoma Oluoevery every time someone makes the puzzling to me assertion that race is a social construct. Well, yes and no. Or that they don't "see race" and just think people are people. If you are black, you can't "choose" not to think about race all the time, because perceptions of race define identity in a world of whiteness. If you are white like me you have to educate yourself on racial matters, but a lot of white people don't want to be bothered to do the work. Donezal is perfect for a town like Spokane, Washington, where she lives, a place where there are very few people of color. My husband was born in Spokane, and he is very white! (:

The left is in real trouble.

Well, I have a few errands to run and am already getting tired. Terry is working on the rental. Put in a new toilet and floor in the bathroom. How I wish I could be more active. I really want to do things but can't, and that is frustrating.

April 15, 2017

Now they have Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and Pence (strange bird, an "evangelical Catholic") within reach of the White House.

They have learned to pretend that they are just ordinary religious people while being dedicated to their evangelical fundamentalist beliefs. They are hard to get around, because they fool most mainstream Americans into taking them at face value, when they really are power hungry authoritarians who crave control above all. They are educated in pretense, and honest people, especially intelligent honest people, have trouble dealing with their subterfuge.

I'd say more, but I'm in the midst of chemo and my brain is tired along with the rest of me. I really recommend this article, which is full of insights. This is the passage that really struck home to me:

After my first year in college or at some point when I was home during the first half of my college career (I don’t remember exactly when), I found myself at a concert held back at my Christian school. A local Christian singer was performing. As she got ready to cover Nichole Nordeman’s “Fool for You” (the “you” is Jesus)* she said something that’s been etched in my memory ever since. “It’s impossible to be too dumb to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. It might be possible to be too smart, but it’s not possible to be too dumb!” The crowd cheered wildly, while I sat there quietly horrified, pondering the “it might be possible to be too smart” part of her statement.

Do read the whole thing. It explains so much about people I know who seem so rational and competent and well educated and yet are fools who are leading us to destruction, while encouraging a know-nothing culture for their followers. They have learned our talk, but we haven't learned theirs, and they are on the verge of victory.

April 12, 2017

Trump, the "authentic fake." He does not realize that he is the leader of a real country. Anyone who still thinks there is anything to recommend this man in any way is a total fool. Particularly galling is the notion that he is just this honest, straightforward guy who tells it like it is, when he is such a liar. Ugh. I really hate him.

April 11, 2017

I follow interviewee Xeni Jarden on Twitter. Big reveal: Even Maddow didn't know she had her little dog on her lap throughout this interview.

Jarden is a breast cancer patient on maintenance, which is how I came to get interested in her. She is a wise person.

I read my Twitter feed, oh boy. Well, we all know the awful stories of the day. Ignorance, ill-will, paranoia, gun violence, dragging people off airplanes...Every population has its goons, and now they are empowered.

News on the Homefront* here is positive, though. I am being pampered and entertained, fed well. My daughter went out and bought me a wardrobe of nice things to wear around the house: yoga pants and t-shirts are my style, simple and neat. Comfort is the most important consideration. Terry bought me a blue tooth speaker to use with my I-phone; I enjoy background music on Pandora, mostly repetitive unmemorable Muzak-like streams like marshmellow Radio, whose melodies do not stick in my head. They keep the earworms away which helps me to hold onto my sanity as I experience chemo brain. Not as bad as I had anticipated, but I have three or four more rounds of chemo to go.

We are spending a lot of time on preparing for a future of palliative care. I am not willing to undergo medical torture. My diagnosis does not encourage false hope, but better facing that reality than embarking on crazy expeditions looking for the cure. I am convinced that I'm getting optimum care right here in Hilo, and if I stop feeling that way I can face that and deal with it.

My oncology nurse, who is an angel, has been advocating for me and managed to arrange for a doctor here to put in an IV port, which will save me from being stuck with needles. Kaiser wanted to send me to Oahu for the surgical procedure. I still will have to go Oahu for those big machine diagnostics like PET scans and MRIs.

The family is so enjoying getting away from the dreary Seattle weather. The children love the little pool, and my daughters have sorted through most of my books, a big job. They are going to the beach later.